Greater New Orleans

Delta Queen steamboat will become boutique hotel

Eliot Kamenitz / The Times-PicayuneThe Delta Queen steamboat, currently docked in New Orleans, will leave the city in February to become a boutique hotel in Chattanooga.

The historic Delta Queen steamboat will depart New Orleans for what appears to be the final time next month when it heads up the Mississippi River to Chattanooga, Tenn., where it will be turned into a floating hotel.

The 82-year old paddlewheeler, which currently is prohibited from sailing with overnight guests, will remain in Tennessee at least until it can be sold, the company that owns the vessel said.

Before it was decommissioned in October, the Delta Queen had been the oldest overnight passenger steamboat sailing in the United States. The 174-passenger vessel offered seven to 11 night cruises to and from various cities, including Cincinnati, Memphis, St. Louis and New Orleans. The National Historic Landmark has carried three U.S. presidents: Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Jimmy Carter.

Congress had several times exempted the boat from the 1966 Safety of Life at Sea Act, which prohibits vessels that have wooden substructures from operating on rivers. The latest congressional exemption expired Oct. 31, and it was not renewed. The bill extending it did not even make it out of committee.

The steamboat has been docked at Boland Marine since Nov. 6, said Vanessa Bloy, a spokeswoman for Ambassador International, the company that owns and operates the Delta Queen. The vessel will leave the West Bank wharf Feb. 4 and is expected to arrive at Coolidge Park Landing on the Tennessee River in Chattanooga between Feb. 8 and Feb. 11, Bloy said.

Vicki Webster, who leads Save the Delta Queen, a grassroots group that has been lobbying for a new exemption for the historic paddlewheeler, is pleased that the vessel will move to Tennessee.

"New Orleans is a very high-risk area. She's at risk of vandalism, unscrupulous souvenir hunters and barges," Webster said of the boat. "At least this move will allow her to get constant maintenance."

But Save the Delta Queen plans to continue lobbying for the steamboat's return to service.

"She's not set up to be a hotel. She's a boat," Webster said. "A boat needs to be kept moving. She just deteriorates when she's at dock. It just won't work for the long haul."

It is unclear how long the Delta Queen will operate as a hotel.

The vessel is being chartered to Chattanooga Water Taxi and Fat Cat Ferry while its owner, Ambassador International, searches for a buyer to operate it as an overnight cruise vessel. Ambassador is continuing to pursue the congressional exemption that would allow the boat to sail again.

"We're still trying to get that exemption," Bloy said. "And we're continuing to look for a buyer."

No major changes are planned for the vessel before it begins operating as a hotel, said Harry Phillips, the owner of Chattanooga Water Taxi and Fat Cat Ferry. But his company will place an auxilary heating system on the dock and to heat the paddlewheeler, because the steam engine that normally warms the boat will be inoperable at dock. The vessel will begin accepting guests in April or May.

Ambassadors International bought the Delta Queen and its sister ships -- the 416-passenger Mississippi Queen and the 436-passenger American Queen -- for about $47 million in 2006 from the now-defunct Delta Queen Steamboat Co. The company owns several other inland cruise vessels, all of which operate under the Majestic America flag. Ambassadors put the entire fleet up for sale in August and announced that it would not operate cruises in 2009.

The company has not yet found a buyer for any of the vessels, Bloy said.

The Mississippi Queen and the American Queen also are docked in the New Orleans area. Those ships, along with the Delta Queen, had been based here since 1984, when the Delta Queen Steamboat Co. moved to New Orleans from Ohio.

Jaquetta White can be reached at jwhite@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3494.